Reimagining Otherness, Recreating the Public Space: Public Administration and the U.S.-Mexico Border

2021 ◽  
pp. 009539972110591
Author(s):  
María Verónica Elías
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Reflection In Action

How can public administrators tasked with enforcing immigration laws bring care and commitment to human relationships and public connections? The contemporary anti-immigrant (anti-Other) “narrative” related to immigration policy is provided as exemplary socio-political-administrative terrain for exploring this question. Considering the undocumented alien as the “other” that possess a threat to the whole is problematic for democratic immigration policy making and governance. This paper suggests that pragmatism and Hannah Arendt’s political theory of publicness offer a theoretical groundwork for understanding and overcoming the destructive dynamics of “othering.” This framework can help administrators, through reflection in action and situational awareness, make sense of their daily practice. Finally, the discussion centers on lessons for street-level bureaucrats to reconsider the border and “others” under a new light, as constitutive of the public space.

Considerateness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edna Ullmann-Margalit
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Family

Focusing on the extreme poles of the spectrum of human relationships, this chapter argues that considerateness is the foundation upon which our relationships are to be organized in both the thin, anonymous context of the public space and the thick, intimate context of the family. The first part of the paper, sections I–III, explores the idea that considerateness is the minimum that we owe to one another in the public space. By acting considerately toward strangers we show respect to that which we share as people, namely, to our common humanity. The second part, sections IV–VIII, explores the idea that the family is constituted on a foundation of considerateness. Referring to the particular distribution of domestic burdens and benefits adopted by each family as its “family deal,” I argue that the considerate family deal embodies a distinct, family-oriented notion of fairness. The third part, sections IX–XV, takes up the notion of family fairness, contrasting it with justice.

scholarly journals Surfing the Public Square: On Worldlessness, Social Media, and the Dissolution of the Polis

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 668-678
Author(s):  
Sue Spaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Private Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public

AbstractThis paper employs Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the social, which lacks location and mandates conformity, to evaluate social media’s: a) challenge to the polis, b) relationship to the social, b) influence on private space, d) impact on public space, and e) virus-like capacity to capture, mimic, and replicate the agonistic polis, where “everything [is] decided through words and persuasion and not through force and violence.” Using Arendt’s exact language, this paper begins by discussing how she differentiated the political, private, social, and public realms. After explaining how online activities resemble (or not) her notion of the social, I demonstrate how the rise of the social, which she characterized as dominated by behavior (not action), ruled by nobody and occurring nowhere, continues to eclipse both private and public space at an alarming pace. Finally, I discuss the ramifications of social media’s setting the stage for worldlessness to spin out of control, as the public square becomes an intangible web. Unlike an Arendtian web of worldly human relationships that fosters individuality and enables excellence to be publicly tested, social media feeds a craving for kinship and connection, however remotely. Leaving such needs unfulfilled, social media risks to trump bios politicos.

scholarly journals Persuasion Connotations at Macro-Social Level

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-44
Author(s):  
Maria-Lucia Rusu
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Methodological Aspect ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Level

Abstract This approach examines the comparative relationship between persuasion at micro and macro-social level, under the framework of the comparative analysis method. In this sense, after identifying and presenting the concept of persuasion, the similarity of interpretation and persuasion techniques are emphasized. The study first addresses the epistemological and methodological aspect of the social connotations of persuasion. It has as main objectives to ensure the interpretation of the concept, to identify the strategies, to describe the mechanisms by which the persuasion in the public space is reconstructed and to discover the methods of resistance to this type of communication. The usefulness of studying this type of communication results from the effects it has on the individual and its various inter-human relationships in the macro-social space.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

Public space of the trustworthiness of sociological knowledge: The case of electoral research

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
OLEKSANDR STEGNII
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Good Tool ◽  
Sociological Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
Approval Ratings ◽  
The Impact

The paper analyses specific features of sociological data circulation in a public space during an election campaign. The basic components of this kind of space with regard to sociological research are political actors (who put themselves up for the election), voters and agents. The latter refer to professional groups whose corporate interests are directly related to the impact on the election process. Sociologists can also be seen as agents of the electoral process when experts in the field of electoral sociology are becoming intermingled with manipulators without a proper professional background and publications in this field. In a public space where an electoral race is unfolding, empirical sociological research becomes the main form of obtaining sociological knowledge, and it is primarily conducted to measure approval ratings. Electoral research serves as an example of combining the theoretical and empirical components of sociological knowledge, as well as its professional and public dimensions. Provided that sociologists meet all the professional requirements, electoral research can be used as a good tool for evaluating the trustworthiness of results reflecting the people’s expression of will. Being producers of sociological knowledge, sociologists act in two different capacities during an election campaign: as analysts and as pollsters. Therefore, it is essential that the duties and areas of responsibility for professional sociologists should be separated from those of pollsters. Another thing that needs to be noted is the negative influence that political strategists exert on the trustworthiness of survey findings which are going to be released to the public. Using the case of approval ratings as an illustration, the author analyses the most common techniques aimed at misrepresenting and distorting sociological data in the public space. Particular attention is given to the markers that can detect bogus polling companies, systemic violations during the research process and data falsification.

The public and the private: reconfiguring the interrelationship during a civil act

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Media ◽  
The City

As is described in this conclusion, more than the media and culture, Madrid’s public space constituted the primary arena where reactions and attitudes toward social conflict and inequalities were negotiated. Social conflict in the public space found expression through musical performance, as well as through the rise of noise that came with the expansion and modernization of the city. Through their impact on public health and morality, noise and unwelcomed musical practices contributed to the refinement of Madrid’s city code and the modernization of society. The interference of vested political interests, however, made the refining of legislation in these areas particularly difficult. Analysis of three musical practices, namely, flamenco, organilleros, and workhouse bands, has shown how difficult it was to adopt consistent policies and approaches to tackling the forms of social conflict that were associated with musical performance.

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